Mass Evangelistic Theology and Methodology and the 1987 Luis Palau Mission to Auckland

Abstract

The Luis Palau Mission to Auckland in 1987 attracted major criticism from four Anglican bishops. This centred on the question of the ability of a foreign evangelist to address the Gospel with prophetic relevance to the social situation in New Zealand. The actual response to the mission indicated that the problem of an America-oriented, male, foreign evangelist was not insuperable. The debate illustrated the age-old tension between the established Christianity of the system and the critique of the itinerant evangelist. But the debate missed the important issues of the inclusion of Roman Catholic participation; the possibility of dissociating mass evangelism from North American evangelicalism; the Arminian insistence on human decision; how to preach an immanentist theology in an evangelistic style; the extent to which a guest evangelist can be a prophet in a host country; and the actual function of such crusades in encouraging the faithful rather than converting the unfaithful.